Obama is about to find out* socialized health care’s dirty little secret. Nobody needs to be a doctor.
About 70,000 patient exams in Saskatchewan are being reviewed for possible errors after concerns were raised about the competency of a radiologist.
The review will look at all work done by Dr. L. Darius Tsatsi since he started plying his craft in Saskatchewan in 2004, health officials said Wednesday. It covers people who had X-rays, CT scans, mammography or ultrasound tests.
Most of the tests were done at Yorkton Regional Health Centre over the last five years, but a small number done in Prince Albert and Swift Current will also be reviewed. Tsatsi has worked in all three cities since moving to Saskatchewan from South Africa.”
The U.S. spends more on health care than any nation on the planet. To say, “the U.S. system is superior to Canada’s” is stating the obvious. What I’m directly my comments towards is how efficiently resources are allocated. If we bumped our spending on healthcare to match the U.S. (an increase of 50%), I have no doubt we could equal their care. At that point it would be viable to have comparisons between the two systems based on service received since we’ve eliminated money from the equation.
“Studies by agenda driven agencies are not credible.”
Ah yes, those pesky studies, always bringing “facts” into an ideological argument. How are statistics regarding the amount of money being expended on health care “agenda driven”? They’re numbers….how you interpret the fact that the U.S. spends vastly more on its health care is up to you.
Hey the leftards are calling everyone racist, they must be getting their lazy welfare fat asses gift-wrapped and handed to them again.
Philadelphia has more MRI’s than our entire country.
There are 10 month waiting periods for beds in the maternity ward.
The average American family keeps 10,000 dolars more after taxes than the average Canadian family.
Sorry to burst your bubble Oz, but the facts get in the way of your little fantasy world.
~bar_jebus at May 21, 2009 1:18 PM
Not at all. I didn’t compare Canada to the U.S.
I said, “Socialized medicine is by far the single largest budgetary expenditure of every level of government in Canada.”
Furthermore, you clearly demonstrated that you have no idea what GDP is and that you have a severe reading comprehension deficit.
That you imagine you burst any bubbles is entirely delusional on your part.
It is you, bar-jebus, that live in a fantasy world.
Jason,
I’d also like to introduce you to some elementary math skills:
17,000 murders in the U.S. per year
2,509,000 deaths in the U.S. per year
17000 / 2509000 = 0.6% of all deaths are related to murder
Our murder rate in Canada is about half of the U.S.’s….so there’s a 0.3% difference in the rate of deaths between our countries due to murders…its pretty easy to see that murder is not a factor when determining the reason that our life expectancy is higher than the U.S.
Very true, I mis-read your comment completely 🙂
I do know what GDP is, and while different from government expenditures, its still a valid measure of how much we as Canadians spend on health care compared to the Americans.
“That hasn’t been a secret for a long time, Fred
Sorry Kate, it was a lame attempt to be cynical/snarky.
Been trying to quit coffee for the last while. Obviously it has unintended side effects. My snark meter is waaaay off.
its still a valid measure of how much we as Canadians spend on health care compared to the Americans.~bar-jebus
No it isn’t.
American service and Canadian service in medicine are not equal so comparing GDP isn’t useful.
Canada fails in the area of diagnostics where we have waiting lists. That means serious problems are diagnosed late.
What Americans are in for a shock about, is how much of the budget of every level of government, that means State and Municipal not just Federal, is going to be paying compared to what their existing budgets are now paying for medical care.
Just imagine American surprise when they encounter their first Unionized nurse’s strike.
bar_jebus
You missed the second part. Lifestyle.
That said, the murder rate per 100,000 residents is more than triple in the US. Per year. Add that to 80 years of lifetime and it adds up in the life expectancy which is total, not yearly.
The average murder rate per 100,000 people between 1998-2004 was 1.82 for Canada and 6.3 for the US.
“Ah yes, those pesky studies, always bringing “facts” into an ideological argument.”
So when an exxon study says that global warming doesn’t exist you believe them or do you only mean that “facts” are only valid if you like them…
Oz,
It is a useful comparison as the lack of funding is the cause of wait times, not the other way around. I have identified that we could boost health care spending by 50% and only then would we equal the Americans in terms of GDP spent on health…seeing that our wait times are about twice as long as American ones (according to data I already posted), those numbers seem comparable….but really they’re not since an increase of 50% in health care budgets would bring us more than just better wait times. We already receive great care from our health system, but it is very delayed.
“What Americans are in for a shock about, is how much of the budget of every level of government, that means State and Municipal not just Federal, is going to be paying compared to what their existing budgets are now paying for medical care.”
Just imagine when they don’t have to worry about insurance payments every month. All its doing is shifting the cost of health care around in the hope that everyone can be included in the system rather than just those who can afford it, which is something we Canadians already do rather efficiently.
Jason,
Mortality rates are also per year…did your socialized education forget to teach you math? Such a poor system isn’t it? 😉
That said my ratio of a 0.3% higher rate of death in the U.S. still holds as I was comparing two sets of numbers that were both per year.
I personally don’t believe that humans cause global warming. Try a brush thats not so broad next time when painting people you disagree with. And why do you keep bringing up Exxon?
bar_jebus
“Mortality rates are also per year…”
Actually, you referred to how many years longer CDNs live as compared to yanks. That figure is called life expectancy. It spread over the average… wait for it… life.
Socialized education indeed. I guess they taught you how to change the benchmark when called on your errors.
And before you go ragging on any more about a 50% rise in Canada’s health spending to match US spending, you may want to consider that since American GDP per capita is higher, their spending per GDP at any given rate is a higher absolute level of spending than the same figure would be in Canada.
In other words, not only do they spend more of their income on Health, they have more income. So multiply your 50% figure by the difference in GDP per capita to get the real figure.
Since you’re a leftard, I’ll be more explicit. If (using a round, obviously not indicative figure) you have a GDP per capita of 100,000 (way higher than actual) in the US, and you spend 15% of your GDP on Health, you are spending 15,000 dollars per capita. The same % spending at 50,000 of GDP means 7,500 per capita.
So, we make less and also spend less as percentage of our income.
bar_jebus
“why do you keep bringing up Exxon?”
I only bring up Exxon as it’s the slander any of the gorbots use to trash everyone who dissents.
BUT, they do bring up a point that the source of a study or “poll” or statistic matters (the slander part is that most of the dissenter have never taken a penny of their money.)
If your source is biased, you can’t trust the outcome as it has a high likelihood of being manipulated.
In other words, when a group with agenda A commissions a study on said topic, what do you think the odds are that they will come up with a report which does anything but affirm their agenda?
“Actually, you referred to how many years longer CDNs live as compared to yanks. That figure is called life expectancy. It spread over the average… wait for it… life.”
….are you serious? The numbers I posted show that out of all deaths, the difference in murder rates between the U.S. and Canada only account for a difference of 0.3-0.4%….do you honestly believe that the 0.3-0.4% more deaths due to murders in the U.S. contribute to a lower life expectancy by 2 years? Your silly attempts to make that 0.3-0.4% into a cumulative number is absurd.
You do make a good point about our countries respective PPP, but even still, our 35,000 to their 45,000 only accounts for a difference of ~25%. That leaves a full 25% increase avaliable for us to put towards health care. Its too bad you didn’t bother looking up the numbers to save yourself the embarrassment.
I really enjoy your derisive use of the word leftard…it just shows how you’re completely unable see this debate in anything but ideological terms rather than real facts. The funniest thing of all? I probably agree with you on a whole range of issues that lean more to the right than the left. Grow up.
We already receive great care from our health system, but it is very delayed.~bar-jebus
I, personally, have been on the receiving end of delayed care and “great” it is not.
It has a huge impact on your quality of life and those who are close to you as well.
I hope you receive some delayed care yourself.
As for delayed diagnostics, you clearly don’t comprehend that leads to cronic or terminal health conditions.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure or a stitch in time saves nine they used to say.
In the American system they don’t have delayed diagnostics.
The lack of funding isn’t the cause of wait times.
Increased funding goes to increased wages and benefits for Canadian medical staff every time.
I’ve seen diagnostic equipment idle when having to use it at 4:00AM New Years day. I waited 6 months for that visit. Prior to the visit I waited 6 months to get the visit booked. Prior to getting the visit booked I waited for 6 months to see the specialist who booked the visit for me.
I was lucky. When my GP saw my problem he said it would take 5-7 years to get the operation.
I got it in less than 2.(I found a way to jump the cue)
Did you think that was great, bar-jebus?
It wasn’t.
mberridge. where do you get your numbers? in ontario over 40% of the provincial gdp goes for health care. when doctors become civil servants what the hell do you expect. 9 to 5 and half that time is spent doing paperwork.
I’m a Paramedic, not a doc. But I must admit. If anyone thinks the GOV can do a better job.
Please, tell me which one that is?
Cost over runs, waste of taxpayers money, Fools working for the gov, Paper work, paper work, papaer work…..
bar_jebus
Ah, not to put too fine a point on it but I didn’t put a figure on how much more we would have spend to match the yanks. I merely pointed out that your figure didn’t take into consideration the difference in income.
From another poster above:
“In 2006, per-capita spending for health care in the U.S. was US$6,714; in Canada, US$3,678”
So, provided these figures are accurate, we would have to spend 82.5% more to match the yanks in health spending and not 50%. That difference in income matters.
Income and PPP are not the same by-the-way.
As per the murder rate’s effect, I didn’t claim it made up the whole difference. In fact, I specifically mentioned a second factor: lifestyle. I don’t have to factor into some model every variable which will account for every bit of the difference.
All I have to do is point out some for you to be wrong. You implied in your post at 1:49 that funding of health care wasn’t needed because they spend more but have lesser outcomes. You implied it would be a waste of money. So, as an illustration of why your point is wrong, I offered two reasons why.
Life expectancy has a hell of a lot more to it than health spending as a percent of GDP. When you equate the two and say that money is wasted by increasing health spending just because the Yanks have a shorter life expectancy, you are not making a valid point. In most of Europe, they spend more than Canada (just like the US) but their numbers are better than ours (unlike the US.) By the less-than-statistically valid reference to US, Europe and Canada, I’d say health spending is Uncorrelated to life expectancy.
I point out two of the multitude of other explanations to any difference in life expectancy between us and the US. I didn’t suggest I accounted for all of them. To make the point your assertion is foolish, I don’t have to.
And, if you are dealing with life expectancy, small mortality differences based on any number of variables DO add up over the years and IS cumulative. Just like all the illnesses you can die from may be small by themselves and over short periods, but they add up. Not sure what’s difficult to comprehend.
Kate — it’s a good point that people don’t need to become doctors but your example is lousy. You can find bad doctors anywhere. We also have some of the very best here in Canada — money does not drive every decision people make.
Even saying all that, I still buy your general point that government control will reduce the pool of people that want to become doctors.
And, South African family doctors are, on the aggregate, among the very best in Canada and we should be glad to have them. My wife, a physician, has worked with many of them and she is very impressed at their level of training.
I’d be mad as H*ll if this guy had botched up my x-ray, or any of the members of my family.
Is a lousy doctor better than no doctor? Since moving to the Big Smoke two years ago, I’ve been going to a doctor “recommended” by a family member. Every time I’ve gone to her, she’s screwed up: lost my file, had my birth date wrong in the computer (big problem if I’d ever ended up in an ER), had another patient’s report on a urine sample on my file (‘wonder what she told the patient whose results were in my file?), leaves her patients’ files open on her computer when she leaves you alone in her office (I could photograph this very personal info with my cell phone…), forgets to give you pertinent paper work, etc., etc. There’s more.
I’m desperately looking for a competent doctor and wonder where I can find one. This doctor practices in a very tony part of Toronto, as part of a group of MDs. As far as I can see, the whole outfit is questionable and it’s time to move on! But where to?
All I know is my counter parts in western PA or TX(similar pay levels, same job within the company), could have an insured MRI within the week, I’d doubt I’d be able to get one before the first day of summer…
Its not insurance if its mandatory, its not free if every two weeks I notice 1/3 of my hard work doesn’t make it to the bank account. If the feds/province spend 40% of their budgets on health care, that means I’m paying over $400 every two weeks for health care, hardly a bargain even in contrast to anecdotal american perspectives of 700 a month. I guess I should feel pride in that perhaps half of that $400 is paying for someone else’s health care, but all I feel is poor and afraid to break my leg.
Bar & phoneybaloni
Another factor to consider when comparing GDP #’s is many Canadians don’t receive any treatment due to rationing; therefore, the GDP #’s you quote are skewed. As it was stated above the argument is statistically unsound and therefore irrelevant.
The bottom line is our current healthcare system is unsustainable. There will be a time in the near future when services will not be available to Canadians because the system will have gone bust. Canadian will get healthcare reform one way or another, it’s just my opinion that it should be done on our terms.
Once again, for the left this is an ideological argument, so it’s politics. Unlike abortion there is middle ground here, it’s just that the left in Canada are unwilling negotiate. I suspect you know this Bar so you need only to remove your head from your arse. Regarding phoneybaloni, the space between his ears is too vast a chasm to navigate safely.
batb, you should move to Nova Scotia dear. In the midst of a provincial election and some parties are promising everyone their own doctor (forget the chicken in every pot). Never mind that they have ERs that close for part of the summer. I guess nobody is allowed to have an emergency then.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; as one who has worked in both US and Canadian systems, the biggest difference is that in the US you are a customer, whereas in Canada you are a debt. In the US they want your business because it is a source of revenue, where in Canada they budget for only x number of patients, any more and heaven forbid it will cost us more money than we allotted for.
Ever see $25 million dollars set aside for “wait time guarantee” sit around for over two years because nobody can figure out how to best use it? People are queuing up to die and the boards can’t decide on the lunch menu.
As it happens, S. Africa trains exceptional physicians. We’re not talking about Somalia or Chad.
The real issue is why did it take 5 years for this fellow’s competence to be questioned.
Of course, if Chretien hadn’t cut med school enrolment in ’93, we wouldn’t have as bad a doctor shortage today.
S. Africa trains exceptional physicians.
I hope Dr. L. Darius Tsatsi is the exception.
To be honest Jason, I didn’t understand your latest post too well. I never said that spending more on health care is a waste…I merely pointed out that our life expectancy is higher than Americans, and yet we spend far far less of our GDP on it than them. There are obviously many other factors that affect life expectancy, but I would maintain that the quality of health care being provided would be perhaps the greatest factor in a developed nation (by that I mean we can assume violent death, famine, etc. are not factors).
Oz,
“As for delayed diagnostics, you clearly don’t comprehend that leads to cronic or terminal health conditions. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure or a stitch in time saves nine they used to say.”
I understand what delayed care leads to. There are flaws inherent in both systems. In the Americans, people who pay for private insurance tend to avoid using it for fear of increasing their premiums. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure most people value their health over monetary concerns, but I enjoy having the ability to inquire about any issue on my health without fear of hurting my financial situation. I really can’t grasp how placing a patient under extreme financial stress is supposed to help them recover.
That systemic issue hurts preventative care in the U.S.. Here, our problem is wait times. Health problems that would have been simple to fix can become much more complicated and even lead to death. I am sorry for your delayed care that you’ve received…my own father just got his hip surgery after a year and a half wait, so I’m not completely unaware of the issue.
To be honest I feel like you’re exaggerating the issue. A recent CBC article highlighted the areas which suffer from the longest wait times:
“Patients waited longest between a GP referral and orthopedic surgery (38.1 weeks), plastic surgery (34.8 weeks) and neurosurgery (27.2 weeks).”
A far cry from the 5 – 7 years you claim. However, I don’t know your situation so I’m not going to claim outright that you’re lying or exaggerating.
Indiana,
“Another factor to consider when comparing GDP #’s is many Canadians don’t receive any treatment due to rationing”
A very good point, and I agree. I don’t think it invalids looking at the numbers however. You could just as easily say that Americans don’t receive treatment or medical checkups as often due to a fear of rising premiums, etc. But I agree with your general point that there are many factors which make statistics somewhat hard to use.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/francis/archive/2009/05/13/u-s-healthcare-lies-part-ii.aspx
You don’t have to look any further than our own national post to find Americans griping about their own system back home.
While I don’t disagree with the main thrust of the post, ie that socialized medicine reduces the supply of Doctors, there’s nothing wrong with South African doctors. I work in a hospital with several of them, and one of them is my family doc. They’re in demand the world over, and we’re lucky to get the ones we do, bad apples notwithstanding.
Lies – Damned Lies and Statistics … one thing is much like the other.
Go to the root of the argument for socialized medicine.
In Canada it was a political ploy by a guy who was one goose step away from European fascists to buy the votes of people who never had any money for health care … prairie farmers.
No more trading chickens or hogs for TB shots for the kids … no more bills for helping the wife pump out kids number 11 and 12.
Of course it helped that your run of the mill blue collar type in the day (see Toronto and Montreal) didn’t have a pot to piss in and would just as likely let little Johnny’s broken arm set itself or try home made splints rather than save money to pay the doctor.
The real story is that it’s all about forcing capable and responsible people to pay for the unlucky or worse the lazy and stupid.
Not sure one can conclude a whole lot based on a sample size n=1. There are certainly some very fine South African trained doctors just as there are some Canadian trained mediocrities. I’m not sure that socialized vs non-socialized medicine has very much bearing on individual physicians’ clinical competence/acumen.
The major ball and chain inflicted by socialized medicine and the associated restrictions on private involvement in health care lie in the restriction of money that can be made available to spend on health care.
The great thing about a price regulated economy lies in the ability of consumers to essentially “vote” with their money. While the price of gasoline shot up last year, there was never any real shortage of gasoline. The ability to choose to allocate more money for gasoline over all the other things for which that money could have been allocated sent a strong signal through the economy to co-opt the resources needed to make gasoline available to provide consumers with what they were voting for.
I constantly hear that we spend too much money on health care. The fact that waiting lists and shortages exist is evidence that, in fact, we don’t spend enough money on health care versus all the other things on which we can spend our money. Spending additional money on health care is unpopular because of the nature of health care goods and services. Health is a “hygiene” factor (no pun intended). Being illness/injury free doesn’t make one happy. But being ill or injured can make one miserable. We spend money on health care to avoid or attenuate a negative. When we spend money on a spa treatment, workout at the gym or a day of skiing, we don’t think of it as “health care” even though these may have a very positive effect on our overall health. I can’t think of the last time anyone told me they enjoyed their last colonoscopy so much they were returning with friends and family for seconds.
Because the Canadian system precludes allocating additional funds through the private system it remains consistently short of funds, resources, and manpower.
How is it that we would scream bloody murder for paying 750/month for superior health care coverage, but 2000/month for the dream home is just fine? Priorities anyone?
To be honest I feel like you’re exaggerating the issue. A recent CBC article highlighted the areas which suffer from the longest wait times:
So this time you’re being honest, eh bar-jebus?
You feel like I’m exaggerating the issue because the Communist Broadcasting Corporation had an article highlighting wait times?
Grow up child.
The sooner you actually have to depend on the failing system you tout, but know nothing real about, the better.
The US needs to put a cap on the amount doctors can be sued for. This will bring insurance costs down, and they won’t need the crazy high salaries.